King National Park (cont)

Seems strange to think of Martin Luther King having a travel alarm, but he was human, which is to say ordinary. He needed an alarm clock, I'm sure. This is the one he had when he was murdered.

And here's the key to his motel room on a night I'll never forget. We were in the American South, driving from Florida to Louisiana. All night long, the radio was full of news stories of riots all over America. Someone had assassinated Martin Luther King as he stood on a balcony on the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. 

Every soul in the country knew why. It wasn't random.

Just like that, he was gone.

Once more, and for the last time, he was brought home to the Ebenezer Baptist Church, just down the block from where he lived, the church where both he and his father had preached, this time in a coffin behind a horse-drawn wagon.

Then laid to rest in the neighborhood where he grew up, beside an eternal flame.